


Watchword

by jenni3penny



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-18 01:30:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11863827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenni3penny/pseuds/jenni3penny
Summary: Ulcers have a high rate of recurrence so... Will lands back in the hospital? Post series. (Mostly because Passcrow keeps saying that Sorkin didn't make enough use of McAvoy's pre-existing condition.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [passcrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/passcrow/gifts).



She's got one of his favorite shirts on and he's focused on the fabric. It's charcoal in color and sheer and it brings out the tint of pink in her skin that usually pans out to pale in most other colors. It's so feminine and soft and he loves how her skin feels gliding under the grain of the fabric. He wants to just press the entirety of his palm onto her back, up the stacking of her spine, draw her close with warm fabric under reach. He has before, that much he remembers, he knows. That shirt draws him in, warms him close and keeps him... keeps him close. Home.

He remembers kissing her excruciatingly slowly while fiddling open the buttons down the front of her and following the lightness of his fingers with his mouth.

As it is, though... he can just barely catch against the little buttons down the front of it. He can just barely catch against it at all. Because... he can't really remember now.

She's wearing one of his favorite shirts and it's got blood on it now (“ _M'so sorry, sweetheart._ ”.).

And she's wearing her glasses. And maybe, most importantly, she's still wearing his ring.

_Still_... because he's pretty sure (though he can't recall why), as he starts to lose consciousness, that she's gonna be pretty pissed.

Because he's seen the signs, felt them coming. But he hasn't told her a bit about them.

And it's entirely possible that she won't be wearing the ring by the time he wakes back up.

 

* * *

 

 

“ _You told me that you were in this_ ,” she murmurs, tracing her fingertip against his palm in repetitive circles, her other hand wrapped loosely at his wrist. “ _You said 'I'm in._ '.”

She's gentle and tentative because, he numbly realizes, she's trying not to get caught in the tubes and things. She's so much calmer than normal – or less frenetic seeming, at the least.

And she's not always so gentle but he likes that she manhandles him sometimes, that she tugs him along. He likes that she grabs him up close and jerks him in by his jacket lapel just so she can kiss him like a mad woman. He likes that she knows that just because he's disgusted by violence, well, that doesn't mean he doesn't like it when she's assertive.

He sorta loves that she knows what she wants when it comes to him because it feels like everything's finally come full circle and (with the obvious exception of their daughter) _him_ is all she really wants.

“ _I am! I'm in_!” he drowsily shouts back at her (but not really because he can't seem to find his voice and she's awfully far away from him and really he says nothing at all).

“ _So be in it, Billy_.” He _is_ , goddamn it. How can she think any differently? He _is_ in it. He'd do anything for her, for Charlotte, for the both of them in combination. Because the both of them in combination is all that's really important to him anymore. “ _I'm not telling your daughter you're gone. I won't do it._ ”

“I'm in, hon,” he thinks he tries to say and her paused stillness makes him think he managed it aloud. Her eyes meet his shrewdly after he says it and they thin a little more in answer, her head tipping to the side as she ignores of the medical ephemera and leans farther over him despite it.

“Charlie misses you,” she murmurs as his vision turns like a lackluster kaleidoscope – all the pieces jumbled but stuck and half his field of vision is now just a mass of broken color. “Will?”

“ _Charlie misses you._ ”

Well, fuck... he misses Charlie too.

 

* * *

 

 

But Charlie Skinner is dead.

_Charlie had a heart attack a few hours ago._

_He died._

He still hears it in her voice on repeat, her accent, his head. Over and again. It's a looping record, scritched and scratched on a tortuous fucking Möbius Strip of a mental LP. Both her voice and the needle jumping back to the start from finish to front, and _Jesus Fuck_ , repetition is the watchword of poets and musicians, kids... because it brings you truth, over and fucking over again.

Because he told her it was gonna be all right (“ _It's over._ ”) and she told him that his best friend, his chosen fucking _father_ , was dead (“ _He died._ ”).

MacKenzie McHale is the only person on the planet that could have told him that and made him believe it. Had it been anyone else... He would never have trusted the words from their lips.

But MacKenzie...? MacKenzie is the woman who can say a name like _Charlie_ and stop his heart in so very many ways. And the day that Mac said the words _“Charlie had a heart attack a few hours ago.”...?_

_Charlie had a heart attack..._

_“Charlie, get your fingers out of your mouth.”_

_… a few hours ago._

_“Charlie, be careful, darling.”_

_… He died._

_“Such a mess, my little Charlie.”_

_Charlie Skinner is dead_ and MacKenzie spends her life catering to Pruitt twenty floors above him and raising their daughter alone from around seven to nine every night while he otherwise tries to hold a sinking fucking ship together – because she never said he'd have to do 2.0 on his own and he seems to have lost Polaris. He can't navigate such a young and inexperienced (neonatal) crew without a guiding hand and a watchword star. She's always been the brightest between the two of them. She's always been the one that they look up to and for.

Jim tries (so hard, he _really_ does) but things are so very different without her, without her just down the hall, without her voice, without her close. And he can't keep holding all the kids together if she's not with him. Family isn't as tight as family can be if it's not together in both location and fundamental goals. He can't keep the boat afloat if she's not sitting right fucking next to him, bailing just as fast as he is and...

_Charlie had a heart attack a few hours ago... He died._

_Charlie Skinner is dead_ , and he hasn't had more than forty five intimate minutes with his wife wherein they're not both exhausted in... a year? Near eighteen months? And his daughter still doesn't always sleep through the night because nothing he does can keep her happy (except, sometimes, music) but, fuck, she has him elated in spite of it. Even when she screws her face up red-angry and screams herself ugly... He can't imagine trading in the viscerally alive feeling he gets when he looks at just the tips of her fingers or the way she wiggles as he teases at her tiny toes.

_Fucking... Charlie's dead._

_Charlie..._ Charlie's **_dad_**.

He's still Charlie's dad. If nothing else works. If everything falls apart.

He's a father and a husband and a guitarist and sometimes he's on television.

William Duncan McAvoy:

Husband ( _of MacKenzie McHale_ ).

Father ( _of Charlotte McAvoy_ ).

Best Friend and Surrogate Son ( _of a Dead Man_ ).

Actual Son ( _of Another Dead Man_ ).

And Anchor ( _on the Side_ ).

“Charlie?” His throat burns and the taste of a blood copper penny prickles up and down the length of his esophagus. He thinks maybe someone put a fishing line down his throat just to scrape the hook tip half back up it for funsies. And he decides he's blaming one of the kids, one of the young ones, and probably Martin. “Mac, where is she?”

“She's fine, Billy. She's sleeping.”

She's fucking regal beside his bed, really. Even with his eyes only half open and the room far too bright for the gray haze of a headache that's nestled in behind his eyes.. she's still something to be revered. At least, she is when he watches her, as she crosses one arm around the front of herself and rubs nervously at her lips with the other hand, fingertips pressing. He has a lot of words to describe his wife and while some of them are more private than others, ' _regal_ ' perfectly fits the tall and elegant and fantastically formidable way she's standing watch over him, dressed with gray and black and intimidation.

He truly is one lucky son of a bitch. “I'm sorry - ”

“We don't hide things from each other, Will. Not anymore, goddamn it.” Her accent shrugs closer to lazy than he's heard it in forever and he blinks, nearly smirking in response. He knows he probably shouldn't be caught smiling right now, not when she's so obviously angry, so righteously upset with him. But what better place to taunt a marital maiming or near death than in what looks like one of New York's finest hospitals?

“Mac - ”

“What the hell were you thinking?!”

Her parents would be absolutely appalled by how gutter and gutted she sounds.

And it's the latter that has him feeling like horse-shit, deservedly. Worse than the headache or burning in his stomach, the hot-touch-melted feeling that's taken up residence right around his diaphragm.

The longer it takes for his wife to reach for him, the hotter that spot in the center of him burns. Lava-like something is brimming up his stomach and threatening to overtake the rest of him, so fucking hot and uncomfortable.

“Mac...” His eyes shut just before the words start catastrophically tumbling out of him and there's absolutely no way to net them up or still or stop them. Because when his mouth decides that it's time to tell MacKenzie the truth about any given thing it tends to just run on until it's finished, and generally without his consensus. “I was thinking that my best friend is dead and I'm losing my wife and my career and I don't know how to be a good father because I never learned. And the only men who could teach me are both - ”

“You're so full of shit, you know that?” The fact that she can so quietly and calmly interrupt him, as though she's reading him an interesting newspaper heading, is motherfucking irritating - to say the very least. “You're an excellent father.”

“Mac - ”

It's when he's about to argue that particular statement that she finally takes his hand and he realizes, blinking his eyes open in surprise, that she's seated beside the bed. She's leaned silently into the chair and both her hands have taken his right one in between them so that she could lift it to her lips. “You're never gonna lose me, Will.”

“I wasn't... I wasn't taking pills. It's not the same.” He says it like a confession even though it should be simply a statement. He has no reason to feel guilty in that regard, he certainly didn't taunt a pre-existing condition this time round. He sure as hell didn't overdose himself this time, not when he had both Mac and Charlotte to consider. This time was different, when he started to tip forward with blood coughing off his lips... This time -

“It was stress induced.” She finishes his thought aloud, her voice still strikingly calm and cool.

“You knew that already.”

“Yes, I did,” Mac admits, stroking her fingertips into the spaces between his knuckles, unconsciously massaging them even as her eyes stay fastened on his face. “Charlie misses you.”

_Charlie had a heart attack a few hours ago._

_He died._

“I miss him so much, Mac.” He doesn't recognize the brokenness of his own voice, he feels outside of the sound of his own words.

She visibly flinches her surprise and he can feel it painfully radiate out of her as she leans back some, away from the words and how wrenched up and twisted they'd been as he'd released them. It's a breath before she corrects his interpretation. “I meant your daughter.”

“I know,” Will whispers tiredly, exhausted. Too exhausted to be **_Dad_**. He's so fucking tired these days, really. He's just completely fucking wrecked and burning (sacked and razed from the inside up) and he's not sure that it was the best idea in the world to get her pregnant when he's old and she's ambitious and their lives are pretty emotionally combative on the good days. The good days... he wants an _entire_ day to just lay naked beside his wife and doze on and off, kissing her lazily and slow in the awake times. He wouldn't need food, just maybe the New York Times and a pen to do the crossword. They'd had days like that once, so many years ago now. “I know that.”

“I knew I shouldn't have worn this shirt again,” she murmurs and he just barely catches it at first. His brain is distracted by the idea of slowly teasing her in bed, just gently and barely-there fucking her until she loses all patience and throws him over onto his back.

The shirt, it's one he loves. He remembers loving her in it.

It's one he's stripped off her slowly before, charcoal and sheer.

It's one he's scraped his short nails down the back of, just before lifting her up against himself. “What?”

“Nothing.” All the air huffs out of her lungs as she tightens his one hand between hers, exhaling hard as she shakes her head at him. “You scare me. So much.”

“It is. It's the same fucking shirt.”

It's the shirt she was wearing on the day Charlie Skinner died.

It's the shirt she was wearing when he was released from prison.

It's the shirt he took off her as she'd sobbed, the other hand at the back of her head to keep her tucked close, to keep her from seeing that he was crying too.

“I just missed him terribly this morning, that's all.” She's reminiscing and he watches how heavily it aches over her features as she looks away and to the side without really seeing anything, glance vacant. “He'd teased me about it that day. Told me that I was already going to be the most beautiful thing you'd seen in fifty days and that it wasn't necessary to gild the lily just in a sick effort to give you a...”

He watches her eyes flutter closed on a wince, lashes looking long and dark as his breathing stutters still just before he demands that she _just fucking_ “Say it.”

“A heart attack.”

She'd always been his heart attack, over and over again, he thinks.

Since the day she'd shown back up in his life looking so goddamn beautiful in deep green and her hair so soft and bouncing along with that indestructible fucking energy of hers.

She'd stopped his heart still, so very many times. So many ways.

“He was such a self righteous asshole sometimes,” he murmurs.

“He was _funny_ ,” she corrects, voice wispy and winsome and smaller than usual, “I laughed – which was exactly his intent. He did everything he could to still make me laugh in those days, despite Pruitt being himself and you being gone.”

Will sees the sadness in her eyes, watches it tint the colors dull. He hates to see her sad. It always feels like failure to him. “I fucking love that shirt, sweetheart.”

“Your daughter misses you, Will,” she tugs at him, physically and emotionally, without all that much effort put in. “Charlotte needs you. She's fussy and Jim is absolutely no help to me. I've had to rely on Don to at least get her down to half volume.”

“Don's calm and easy,” he surmises, twists his hand around so that he can lace their fingers together and her other hand slowly stretches up his forearm. “He's good with her.”

“From what I hear he's been pacing the cat-walk in front of Sloan's office for an hour and a half.” Her body stretches forward so that she's angled long to the side of the thin hospital mattress.

“Bring her.” He nudges at her, voice going imploring but tired as he starts to fade. “Charlie, not Sloan.”

“I will.”

 

* * *

 

 

Their daughter had a name before she was born, before anyone even knew about her, just as the last of Charlie Skinner slipped away from them. There was no question, really, after the fact. And he's so happy that she's a girl - and not just because he's got father issues that he'd be twice as twisted up about if his first had been a son.

More because it's... well, it's more reminiscent of his wife _and_ the man she's named after.

She's a tough little thing, his Charlie _and_ Mac too.

She's gonna have to be scrappy, gonna have to hold her own, his daughter.

(Because her mother spent years in a war zone and her father can't communicate like a human being with any-one-thing but the darkness on the other side of a camera lens and it's entirely possible that they've made a few enemies along the way.)

She's gonna have to be strong, stronger than either of them have been.

She'll have to be better than both him and his wife, for all that they've done (to each other).

“See?” Mac's voice is mostly a sigh, resting into the room with audible relief. “I told you.”

Besides getting their daughter quietly to sleep on his chest he's not so sure what she's gloating about but he accepts it in silence. Mainly because he is sorta proud (absolutely thrilled) that he's been the only one to shush her and lull her to sleep and all he really had to do was fit her between the tubes and things and press her high into his chest, just under his chin, humming a song to trick her.

This isn't nap-time, it's sing-time. At least until-you-fall-to-sleep-time.

And he thinks maybe he doesn't need the New York Times crossword puzzle, not after all.

And maybe, if he can convince Mac to climb up onto the bed beside him, this will be the best medicine the wide world can provide him.

“I miss Charlie,” he murmurs, even as his palm spreads flat to his sleeping daughter's back.

And Mac's hand is cool on his hot forehead, the weight of it pressing him still. “He'd tell you that you're an excellent father too. Now, _sleep_. Both of you.”

Her tone is sharp and he doesn't argue.

Because, frankly, he doesn't want to expend the energy or wake his daughter and, well, he's just caught sight of his guiding star and she smiles at him like everything's gonna be all right. 


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keep with me awhile - we're going to go a little bit back in time. Then we'll meet back to where we started.

_She'd looked up and, at first, she hadn't realized that there was something wrong._

_She hadn't consciously realized it, anyhow... but she'd_ known _it. Even as she'd squinted over the rims of her glasses and blankly glared at the television screen, mounted inside the wall and smooth... she had_ known _something was off. She'd muted the commercials with the intention of upping the volume once he'd been back and that's why she'd looked up in the first place, to search for his face again. It's how she'd know that something had gone wrong._

_Because it'd been eight twenty three and they'd just come back from commercial and her husband wasn't at his desk. He'd been replaced instead by Sloan Sabbith, dark hair slicked back in a pony-tail and eyes wide, complexion paler than usual. Sloan had looked like she hadn't planned to be on national television and it'd made MacKenzie's throat clutch up and close as she'd reflexively stood from her desk, from her work._

_She had looked up, looked back down at her paperwork, and then looked up again near instantly. And every inch of her had cringed upon realizing that something terribly wrong had happened, undoubtedly._

_At eight twenty four her heart had stopped because her husband, the second most watched cable news anchor, was not at his news desk during a live broadcast. And, God, nothing kept Will from that desk on the days he was supposed to be behind it. He'd once broadcast with a fever over one hundred, or high as a fucking kite, and another time he'd done the A & B Blocks with a fussily sleeping baby in his lap but hidden under the desk. Hell, his father had died and he _still _hadn't left that desk._

_It was only disaster that would draw Will away from his audience, his desk, his calling._

_It would have to be a physical imperative, or something wrong with her or... Charlotte._

_Fuck, they'd had Charlie in the Control Room last she knew, with an extra headset (hooked to nothing) on her head just to distract her grabby little hands. Had something -_

_“Millie?! What the hell is happening down there??” She'd already been across the office when she'd asked, her cell phone already pressed to her ear and calling Jim's cell._

_“Jim called up – he's sick, they think.”_

_“They think?!” Mac had met her at the doorway and easily surpassed her on the way downstairs, “That's not good enough.”_

 

* * *

 

_One of the things she'd always loved the most about him, in a physical regard, was that he was big and tall and he could make her feel feminine and delicate instead of gawky and that usually... well, usually the weight of him was a protective comfort. Usually he was conscious enough to make sure he wasn't crushing her, though, enough to rather curl around her and be her safety, her protector, her love._

_But the size of him certainly hadn't helped her any when she'd tried fruitlessly to keep him upright over his office desk, the top of it spattered in viscous blood and spittle. They had both swayed when he tried to swing away from her touch and she'd forced him back round again, tipping their combined (im)balance even farther downward._

_She'd found him trying not to spit up blood and bile and failing miserably, the deep brownish red of blood staining paled lips and ashen skin and down the tie she'd bought him not a full week before._

_She loved what that specific shade of blue did for his eyes..._

_“M'so sorry, sweetheart.” His fingers had scrabbled down the front of her, trying to catch and wipe at the blood that had already speckled sheer gray fabric too. “So sorry. I didn't - ”_

_“Stop telling me you're sorry,” she'd demanded, felt her voice go near shrill in fear as his ass had hit the carpeting hard and she'd twisted down awkwardly after him. Her ankle had gotten rolled under the way she fell in beside him but she'd ignored the pain, caught the way his head banked back instead. “Billy?”_

_“Charlotte?” He'd slurred it, his breathing strangely staggered and roughed up. His whole body had labored as he'd let the back of his head thump into the front edge of his desk. He'd stopped vomiting blood but... he'd near blacked out on her too._

_“She's fine.”_

_She'd been entirely aware of their audience then, a gaggle of employees just outside the glass of his office and Don her reliably noble savior, keeping them blocked back by the precise angle of his body in the doorway. Still, she could see Jenna's face past one of the full length windows, terrified as she spoke into a cell phone. At least Don's presence had given them some near semblance of privacy, although... not really, not entirely. Actually, not at all._

_He'd numbly angled his glance to a very specific spot in the carpeting, near her bare foot after she'd kicked a shoe aside. “Ambulance is coming, Mac.”_

_She'd merely nodded acknowledgment as she'd stroked the flat of one palm down her husband's slacked pale cheek, “Stay right here with me, darling. They're coming.”_

_His eyes had been lucid and aware for a moment, just a brightness of blue and then he'd sunken under again,“Kenz...”_

_“Billy, don't.” Her hand had taken that same stroking path down his cheek and jaw and she hadn't even recognized her own voice, not for how begging it'd gone into the odd stillness of his office.“Just breathe. Keep breathing.”_

_She'd felt Don shift closer more than heard him, even as she'd counted the sluggish rhythm of her husband's breathing, she'd felt the other man's stirring in the air. “Mac?”_

_“Don't touch him.” Her response had been sharp and cruel as Keefer's hand had reached toward them, colder than she'd likely been with any of them ever, let alone Don specifically._

_Don was one of hers, one that she'd hand picked for his dry brilliance. One that had shown ideal promise long before any of the others..._

_And realistically, well, she'd been peripherally aware that she'd seemed... hysterical._

_Ultimately... well, she hadn't given a fuck. She was allowed some margin of hysteria when it was Will-centric. She was allowed..._

_She was allowed when her husband was unconscious against her shoulder and his still-wet blood was dotted down the front of the both of them._

_She'd looked up slowly, listening to the sluggish breathing that had warmed her neck, fingers sliding into blonde hair and clinging into it, “Don... Charlie can't see any of this.”_

_“It's okay. Jim's got her.”_

_And she'd chosen Jim too, specifically picked him out. Thankfully._

_And maybe, she'd mused, she'd unknowingly chosen the both of them for that moment exact._

_Because maybe they were the only two men left who she could trust to hold her together for this._

 

* * *

 

And Jim had told her, with that tortured young artist face of his – it had been unprecedented, an absolute surprise and with no warning. Will hadn't given him an inkling that something had gone so wrong, not a single clue.

(Funny, she felt very much the same in that regard. Will hadn't given her any warning at all that this was coming either.)

And all the older man had said to him during commercial, voice garbled and cluttered under a hand cupped to his lips, _“Get Sloan.”_

_“Will?! What the hell - ”_

_“I can't - not in front of my girls.”_ The last Harper had seen of Will before she'd found him was one hand wiping down his face, the other tossing off his mic pack, chucking it onto the anchor desk.

Not in front of the world, his world, she mused later.

Not in front of a live televised national audience but, to Will... not in front of _his girls_.

Not anywhere that she or Charlotte could see and especially when he knew they were both in the building, when he knew she had his show on in the background whenever she stayed in the office past eight o'clock. When for all he knew their daughter was nestled in somewhere and watching, waiting, sucking on a bottle she shouldn't still have possession of but, _God_ , the staff spoiled her silly. Sometimes to the point of sheer frustration. 

“Mrs McAvoy?”

She doesn't correct people when they give her his name – it's a gifted reminder that if she truly belongs with anyone, to anyone, it's Will. She doesn't feel the need to be independent, not when the counterpoint to independence is being somehow attached to him, to their little family, to ACN and everything they work so fucking hard to keep afloat.

She doesn't answer the nurse so much as just nod, her phone gripped tightly in her palm but her purse is missing in action and she's just now realizing that she's got his wallet in her other hand. She doesn't remember how she got it but it's so familiarly him. It's so personal and specific to him that she tucks it against her sternum as she stands and follows in the direction the nurse is ushering her in.

The older woman is tall and walks swiftly which may be the one thing she really appreciates. “He's not conscious yet but you can wait in his room.”

“I'd like to speak to his doctor,” she answers tightly, voice stronger than expected as she's led down the hall from the waiting area.

“You will.”

Unconsciously she presses the wallet up against the right underside of her jaw, her hand fisting around it. “Sooner rather than later, please.”

The nurse's head draws back a fraction as she stops by a closed door, as though surprised that Mac would be so emphatic, awed by the fact that in regards to her husband's health MacKenzie (McHale) McAvoy will be as forceful as a fucking Commandant. “You will.”

Mac exhales slowly, feeling precisely as shrewd as she probably sounds and feeling just fine with that, not an ounce of guilt. “Thank you. This room?”

“Yes.”

She doesn't wait for the other woman to invite her in, just reaches for the door handle.

She doesn't wait for anything, not when he's on the other side of the door.


	3. Chapter Three

“I'm in, hon,” he murmurs and her heart stops up from thudding. Because she's been rambling to him pointlessly, ceaselessly mumbling anything that comes up between her lips in a sad sort of nebulous word vomit. She can't necessarily remember why she's brought up that long ago conversation, that demand she'd made of him when she'd come back (not that she'd had a right to be making demands of him at all).

She just knows, as she looks over the pale slacking of his jaw, that he's aged too much in the last few hours.

He's so grayed and she just wants him to smile, to roll his eyes and chuckle, to blush while she teases or picks at him about being too much a gentleman and too excellent a husband.

She just wants color on his skin, in his eyes.

She wants more life in the sound of his voice.

“Charlie misses you,” she tells his stillness when, in all seriousness, what she really means to say is ' _I need my husband back and right fucking now, please_ '. “Will?”

He's lost to her again, though, and he doesn't answer. His body is still and pallor near the same color as the sheets he's tacked between and she could just fucking scream her lungs out. She would too if she thought him being awake would be more useful to his recovery. Truth is, though... she knows that him being unconscious is exactly how he's going to heal, he needs the rest more than he needs her hovering. More than he needs her. She may be what brings _NewsNightWithWillMcAvoy_ out of him but... it's the physical rest and some righteous homage to the school of medicine that's going to bring her husband back to her. Though, even knowing that doesn't stop her skin from crawling with an itch, one that tells her to grab his hand up in both of hers and chant ' _Please, Billy, please wake up, honey_.'. It would work, she knows. In the long run she knows that she could likely tug him back to her, yank him from a medicinal near coma just by begging his name loud enough, by the pull of her fingers on his and the whisper of anything that sounds like desperation or fear. She could bring Charlotte into it, if she were really looking to stack the deck. Their daughter's crying would bring him right on back to her and she knows it, Christ she _knows_ it would.

There's very little in the world that would keep Will McAvoy from singing feel-better-baby songs to his daughter, lulling her into happy sleep.

“Goddamn it, Billy,” she sighs out, letting her body slowly settle into the chair that's drawn up to the side of the bed.

She takes his hand into both of hers slowly instead of grabbing at it, intentionally trying not to wake him while she leans forward and presses his knuckles into her forehead.

It's not the first time she's waited him out.

Hell, it took years of patient waiting for him to forgive her... She can wait a little longer.

She'll just sit and wait until he comes back.

 

* * *

 

 

She's watched him sleep before, and with Charlotte curled up on his chest as well. It shouldn't make her feel so useless, so small. It's really nothing new considering they're like this near three times a week, at the least, and it's nothing that should chill her from inside out – but it's got her cold and nervous when uually it would make her smile, make her swoon for him...

(There's very little about Will that she loves even more than him just loving his family.)

He loves cuddling down on the couch with his daughter, or just kicking back in the recliner they'd chosen a week before she was born. And thank Christ they didn't go with the leather like he'd wanted... The warm and plush mossy colored fabric is a much better fit to the way he pulls on one of his college sports team sweatshirts and curls his little girl up under his chin and hums the both of them into napping. There are some Saturday afternoons she sips tea from the doorway, grinning at the fact his got his mouth hanging open and snoring and, _Dear America... This is actually Will McAvoy_.

“I think maybe your chair misses you more than I do. The one at home, not the...” Not the desk that he owns just by way of charismatic charm and intelligence and a passion for truth that's always made her want to push him farther, harder. “Well, probably both of them, actually.”

Charlotte fusses, right fist flailing, and she leans down over the both of them. Mac cups her palm against the back of the baby's head, kissing into silken blonde to comfort.

She's still shushing the child when she feels his fingers press against her hip bone, driving against her pelvis and staying pressed there. His head turns closer to hers and she feels him sigh more than she hears it.

“I didn't wanna scare you,” he admits, as though he can only say the words when they're touching, when they're well enough connected that he can grab at her should she decide to step away and leave him behind. “That's why I didn't - ”

“But you did scare me, Billy.” Her voice comes out a mingled flux of accusation and vulnerability and she hates that those things are audible, even with Will. “I will be afraid of losing you every day of my life.”

He sighs again and she feels the heat of his breath just behind her ear before he kisses in her hair and makes the hair on the back of her neck prickle and tingle. “You can't - ”

“It's just the way things are,” she tells him sharply, blinking before she lifts her glance to meet his. He just rubs his chin against their daughter's head in response, blue eyes wide, wise, and honest as he stares at her with silence as the thing that holds them tethered together a moment. “They just are. It just is.”

 

* * *

 

 

He thinks he must be dreaming, he thinks he's possibly lost it, but despite all that he thinks he'll just stay hushed. Because maybe it's the meds? Maybe he's hallucinating. Maybe it's just his wife, showing off. Because half naked MacKenzie is not what he expected upon waking but it seems like it'd be a really idiotic decision to question the moment.

He loves that bra in particular, actually.

It's more lacy delicate than not and darkly wonderful against her fair skin.

It's been rare that they've had a lot of intimate moments and he feels a little guilty for this one, considering it's blatantly voyeuristic and she's got no idea that he's awake but... he loves her for so much more than her body but he also loves her body more than he probably should. She's a fucking walking wet dream to him and most every time he looks at her, really looks, he's reminded that there were days (long ago now) that he merely fantasized about that body, about doing some particularly naughty things with it, to it, for it. Now he could mentally re-create it upon request and even the new curves or lines or marks. Any little thing that's new (scars, stretch marks, loose bits) and she's concerned he'll find them what? Offensive in some way? Because he actually finds them sorta sexy. He's actually peripherally concerned for her safety because he'd be prepared to just shove her up against the nearest wall and fuck her brains out every time she's even remotely insecure about a post-pregnancy stretch mark, just to convince her. Admittedly, it's not often that she cares much, though. She's not overly self conscious about her body... Still, she also doesn't know he's watching her as she unzips the little black zipper on her pencil skirt.

She's already got it skimmed half down her hips, otherwise only clad in her bra and underwear as he sighs into the warmth of the room. “Kenz...”

“Hey, sweetheart,” she murmurs, voice obviously surprised but tired as she steps from the black of the skirt and turns. There's a smile born of unadulterated relief on her face and he can see her shoulders dip as she drops the skirt to the bottom of the bed.

The room is mostly dark, save for a light she's left on from somewhere at his left. He can't tell where it's coming from but it's pale and soothing and he appreciates the way it lights her skin, like the equivalent of a visual humming – sensual and soft and hazy on the edges. “S'late?”

She's a black and white angel, something all gray toned but somehow vibrant.

He still go some meds in his system, he figures. Because everything about her is tunnel-visioned and dream-like.

“Very,” she nods on a whisper, a pair of jeans in her hands suddenly and he realizes that he's not completely tracking time as well as he'd thought because it's a flash and she's already half dressed once again but it seems like years after she's buttoned up a pair of jeans on before she gets closer. “Will? Babe, do you need me to call a nurse?”

“For what?” Feels like he lifted his hand to reach for her the week before they'd come to this and he's only just now catching hold of the criss cross of fabric between her breasts, the little swath that connects the bra cups together.

“I mean,” Mac murmurs, her hand loosely linking around his wrist so that she can support his weight as she moves in closer and leans her bare shoulders over his chest, “are you feeling all right?”

“I feel good,” he whispers, his vision entirely beguiled by the way her hair tips forward from those shoulders and makes her neck look even longer. “I wanna go home, Mac. Please? Tell 'em I'm fine.”

“Will - ”

“I want our bed.” He tugs on the fabric of her bra, even as he feels his voice go raspy with almost tears. “I wanna hug my kid.”

He can't remember the last time he's cried in front of her... It couldn't possibly have been over Charlie Skinner? Except maybe? No... he'd cried for his other Charlie. For Charlotte. The first time he'd held her. He'd cried when Charlotte was born, that he knows. He doesn't quite understand though, considering the pain has lessened considerably, why he'd be crying now.

“You had her earlier. The two of you napped together awhile.”

But he is... and mention of Charlotte, the mere thought of his daughter makes his eyes well up and he drowns down deeper into his own unexplainable sadness. He closes his eyes as she touches his face, and instead of letting himself dwell he focuses on the tactile sensation of lace beneath his calloused fingers. “Billy?”

“Where is she?” His voice is tremulous and quiet and she's obviously worrisome (which he hates) so he plies a certain weight of force in the center of his palm to counter it, forcing confidence into the way he pushes his hand flat to her lower spine so that he can pull her down fuller against him. “Where's Charlie?”

She ends up wedged into him, one of her denim clad legs between his and trapping the sheet up as she turns her weight onto the opposite hip and stretches up the side of him.

“Sloan has her. You scared us.”

Fuck, he loves the feel of her silken bare skin under his fingertips.

Nearly as much as he likes the way her bra strap keeps catching the soft inside of his wrist and the hospital bracelet as he traces the curvature of her spine. “I'm sorry, hon.”

“I know.”

 

* * *

 

 

Two days later and she steps back into his hospital room just to find him pacing up and down the farther side of his bed, not a care in the world to the fact his cute but pale Irish American arse is a fine view to anyone who decides to 'accidentally' wander into a celebrity's hospital room. He's got Charlie up his chest and she's sleeping, head on his shoulder and one of her fists pressed against her mouth, he's managed to ruck the hospital gown enough that she damn near catches a glance of more than just the backside as he turns in his pacing and catches her eyes.

His glance is bright but bitter somehow, eyes their beautiful blue but muddled somehow by frustration.

She's seen the look before and it always seems to do with him not being able to accomplish something that he deems should be easier than it really is – and Charlotte is always more difficult than expected.

Mac lets a half smile tip one side of her lips as he finishes the turn, Charlie on his shoulder and the IV pole swinging along in the other hand. “You want a photo of that fine specimen on the cover of Us Weekly, darling?”

She waves toward his lower half with an arched brow, pretending to try and catch another glance of his ass as he blinks and goes still in his pacing.

“She was fussy before and now she's not,” he tells her blankly, face unmoved by emotions and more pale than usual. He's still looking a little ashen to her and she'd do near anything to get the color back up on him. “It was the only way to get her to stop crying.”

His eyelashes flutter as he stands in one place, still unmoving and as though he's lost his momentum to continue. Mac catches the way his fist suddenly flexes hard around the IV pole and he's matching her glance when she looks up, an unspoken request in his eyes.

She knows Will well enough to know when he needs her and when he doesn't – even when he doesn't ask her by way of silently imploring something. But he mouths something at her that looks a hell of a lot like 'Please' as his eyes go closed and she steps into his stillness without a second thought to the movement.

“Are you dizzy again?”

“A little,” he admits on a rush, nodding as she steps herself into his chest and presses her whole body forward so that Charlie is trapped between them. Her right hand lifts to brace the girl's body and she turns her face against fabric that smells like baby soap and their home and, comfortingly, like his aftershave.

He _had_ shaved. She hadn't necessarily noticed at first.

“Would you like to hand me our daughter, then? Before you tip ass over teakettle?” Mac lifts the other hand to brush the backs of her knuckles on his smooth and cool cheek before both hands wrap on their child. She leans back enough to turn Charlie around into her chest, a shushing noise repeating past her tongue and through her teeth as the little thing fusses at her and wiggles angrily about being dislodged.

Will lets his body lower to the mattress after he's sure she's got Charlie tucked up tightly. His whole frame sags against the thin and generic hospital mattress and she shifts just enough to let him lean forward into her, head and shoulders first. There's something comforting about being connected to him, the two of them touching even if it's just because he leans the crown of his head just along the bottom of her rib cage and Charlie's likely to kick him right in the temple if she keeps fidgeting but neither of them move.

“I wanna go home, MacKenzie.” There's exhaustion in him still and she understands it while also being frustrated by it, near infuriated. She needs her husband back, full strength, full stop. She needs the man he is to her every day. Her husband, her daughter's father. She doesn't give a shit about the news anchor at the moment. She needs _her_ Will back.

“Tomorrow morning,” she murmurs, the empty hand cupping against the back of his head so that she can silk his hair between her fingers.

“Really?”

“Really,” she answers quietly, lifting her jaw higher as Charlotte wiggles up tighter against her neck and shoulder, fussing in her half sleep. “Long as you have no other incidents.”

“You gonna forgive me by then?”

“There's nothing to forgive, Billy.” Exasperation makes her voice rougher than usual but she's tired too and she can hear her own accent slurring a little. “Though, I do think it's time you go back and see Jacob.”

“I already called him.”

Mac shifts Charlie slightly higher, angling her jaw so that she can rub against soft baby skin and the scent of her daughter close, “Did you really?”

His palm lifts up under Charlie's right foot and he closes his fingers around the disheveled yellow sock and tiny toes. And he holds there a moment before the other hand lifts and his features go determined. Both hands shift into fixing the girl's socks, the both of them one after the other. “You think I'm stupid, Mac? That I'd mess around enough to lose this?”

Mac exhales and tries to swallow some patience. He hears the sighing from her lungs because he looks up and she can see honest apology in his eyes. _Fuck_ , he's still got beautiful eyes. She thinks maybe she's always been in love with those eyes, even when she didn't even realize she was in love with the man himself. “Do you want me to go with you?”

“Not particularly,” he admits with a shake of his head his hands finding her hips and drawing her tighter and closer.

“We'll sort the rest, Billy. The three of us,” she tells him, appreciating the fact that there's a near smile ghosting his lips and she can only imagine what he may be thinking as it reaches his eyes and flicks them brighter.

He nods, leaning forward as his hands grip curling on the backs of her thighs. “I know.”

“I also booked us a long weekend, just you and I. Six weeks from tomorrow if we can tough it out til then.”

That smile of his twitches wider and he angles his head, jaw lifting slowly so that he can match the way she's looking at him. “What about Charlie?”

“We'll sort it. We have six weeks to figure something out and we won't ever be too far from her anyhow.” She simply shrugs before her hand goes to his shoulder and pushes at it. She forces him to sit up straighter, angling her hips flush so that she can step entirely between his legs. “Do you think we could personally hire Lonny? For a weekend like that?”

“I don't think he does diapers, hon.” Will takes to the way she's shifting, his hands lifting once against to take his daughter.

“Not at all what I meant.”

“I'll find out.” He nods because he knows exactly what she meant and it's obvious from the way he just takes Charlie into his lap and seemingly ignores ending the conversation.

They're often in agreement when it comes to Charlotte and anything to do with her safety, her protection, or the people they surround her with. It's nice to not have a fight over one thing in their lives and furthering Charlotte McAvoy's protection is it.

“Am I being over-protective?”

He grins as he looks up at her, his features finally filling out more like her own Billy than they had in longer than she'd realized. “Yes, but I like your train of thought so I'm not gonna argue.”

She gives him a good-natured wink and lifts her fingers to twist through his hair on a tease. “You're a good man, Will McAvoy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do believe that's it. Thanks for sticking it out!


End file.
